Various Observations On Life

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My awesome friend always bakes fancy things. Today was Apple Pie Pops. That’s right people, Apple Pie on a stick. They were delicious and portable. Best idea ever, I say. I’m now trying to convince her to do other various pies on sticks. I’m hoping for pumpkin!!

I was at my local Chapters last Halloween and they had a huge display of various themed books and games in the middle aisle. I was browsing around and being a big fan of the holiday, I was drawn to the display. The following is probably one of the most awesome themed Trivial Pursuit game I have ever seen.

Now, I’m a Tim Burton fan in general. I’ve loved the man’s work since I was a tiny, wee child and saw the epic hotness that was Batman. The twisted and dark essence of his movies were always some of the most fascinating and spellbinding works of cinema I could ever drink in and honestly, not much has changed since those times.

The Nightmare Before Christmas was my favourite movie that Tim Burton was ever affiliated with. I LOVE Halloween and Christmas if obviously awesome so inherently, the combination of the two was absolute genius. That is why, when I saw this game, I pretty much squealed with joy and just had to capture the moment. I love to play Trivial Pursuit and this would be SUCH a guilty pleasure to play.

Sadly, however, I had no money on me at the time of this wonderful find and it was no longer in the store when I went back. So to anyone reading this who feels the need to bestow a gift upon me, this is an appropriate item. Granted, I’ll have to find some people who would play it with me…

This, my friends, is a freaking Steve Irwin action figure. I scored this in a Liquidation World and was absolutely stoked to see it on the shelf. This man taught me so much about animals and conservation and was ultimately badass. It even talks!!! So yes, I had to buy it and he now sits proudly on the shelf of my desk at work. RIP Steve…you were one of my heroes growing up.

This photo represents comfort for me for a few different reasons. For one thing, it’s comforting to know my kitty Mr. Peep enjoys gaming as much as The Boyfriend and I do (he stole this while I was in the middle of a game of Fallout: New Vegas) and for another thing, he just looks so cozy cuddled right up to the PS3 controller. As soon as I put it down to go get a drink he jumped up on the couch and snuggled right down on it. I didn’t have the heart to wake him up so I turned the game off.

I took this when wandering around on the edge of a farmer’s field last November. It’s a harvested corn field and I remember thinking that it seemed almost fitting with the cold air because the setting sun didn’t look like it was providing any warmth at all.

This one happened after a HUGE storm in our city this summer. A few days later, a co-worker of mine was telling us how her brother called to ask if the city was on fire because it looked really orange. This was funny for the silliness of the statement and almost believable because the sky was so very orange. However, with the lack of smoke in said sky, it was still a pretty dumb statement.

I’d like to start off by saying that I should have been a teenager in the 70’s. Musically at least. Perhaps from the mid 70’s to the mid 80’s. I grew up on my parents’ music and it never really left me. When I was little, my mom got me to clean the house by putting on albums by Bon Jovi, Meat Loaf, and Joan Jett. These were some of my favourites but there were so many others that lace the memories of my childhood Saturdays as I helped my mother vacuum, dust, declutter and various other chores.

My parents are huge music fans of any kind and I took this personality trait to heart. I almost always have music of some kind playing wherever I am and I love all different genres. I re-purchased a great deal of my parent’s albums/tapes on CD when I got older and I now have all these songs on my trusty mp3 player as well.

As you can imagine, because of how much I love music, I’ve been to a lot of concerts. A few years ago, I had to put myself on a concert/hockey game embargo for a year because I added it up and had spend almost a two grand on them in a little over two years. For me, that’s a hell of a lot of cash. So I went a year without concerts and as soon as that was over, I was right back at it. I saw Three Days Grace and Our Lady Peace (for the third time) almost right away.

One annual concert/festival that my fair city does every year is something that, in my opinion, is really very awesome. It’s called Rock the Park and it takes place over three days every summer with 12 bands or so participating. It was started in 2004 to support the Bethany’s Hope Foundation and if I heard it right this year, it has raised over a million dollars for this charity. Some of my favourite bands have played this concert over the years, such as Journey, Def Leppard, and Alice Cooper.

In the previous 6 years, I’ve always wanted to to go Rock the Park. My parents went for a lot of the shows and the summer that my sister was working with the RCMP, she worked the beer tent so she got to see the concert for free. I was always either busy or didn’t have enough money to go and never was able to partake.

This year though, when they announced the line up, I was all over it. The first night there weren’t a whole lot of bands that I desperately wanted to see but the Friday night was headlined by Meat Loaf and the Saturday had Our Lady Peace performing. It’s hard to get the opportunity to see bands that were at their massive peak in 10-20 years ago so the opportunity to see Meat Loaf doesn’t come around often and I try to see Our Lady Peace whenever I can because they always put on an amazing show.

As the concert came closer, however, I didn’t manage to get around to getting any tickets. However, my friend and I ended up with free tickets for the Thursday night show, featuring Trooper, Loverboy, Steppenwolf, and Poison. Despite the fact that it was the second hottest day ever recorded here in the city of London, we totally went. It was great. All kinds of fun people, great music, beer and fun times.

Trooper

Loverboy

Steppenwolf

The most epic thing happened right before Steppenwolf took the stage. I was waiting for my friend to use the porta-potty (don’t even get me started on these things) when a man came up to me and said, “Do you have fifty bucks?” Being slightly suspicious, I cautiously inquired as the the reason he would as me such a question.

What he said next had me tingling all over and jumping around in excitement. He looked at me and said, “I have two tickets to tomorrow night’s show and I can’t use them. I’ll go as low as $40.00.” I immediately pulled out my wallet and saw that I $30 left and told him my friend was in the washroom and could he wait a couple minutes. When she returned I hopped up and down and asked if she had ten bucks. SHE DID!

We scored two $60 tickets to the Meat Loaf concert for $40. A savings of $80 to see the concert I most desperately wanted to see.

We didn’t end up staying for Poison because it was freaking 44 degrees with the humidex and we were melting. We reasoned that we had tickets to the preferred show for both of us and we could deal without seeing Brett Michaels in concert.

We went again the next night, thankfully a much cooler night with more misting stations set up for us to prance through and cool down in. We got to see Blue Oyster Cult (a little bit of Don’t Fear the Reaper) and Cheap Trick which was just awesome but nothing compared to finally getting to see Meat Loaf live in concert. It was so cool. I had been dying to see this concert since I was a little kid with a broom in my hands, belting out Bat Out of Hell even though I didn’t understand what the lyrics meant at all.

The Loaf!!

Patricia could really belt out the female parts to the songs, she was AMAZING!

When he sang Bat Out of Hell, I danced my butt off all over Harris Park!

So in summary, I have now been able to cross another old school yet epic concert off my list. It’s getting down to the wire, people…some of these bands are getting hard to track down in concerts nearby. I may have to start travelling more.